I was lying on a table and poked full of needles, so not in much of a position to argue.

“Your well of creativity is going out,” she said, pantomiming. “You must bring it in. Learn new things, make that well a fountain, so that writing does not become a stress to you. You need to minimize your stress.”

Fast forward 3 weeks. I’d shared this conversation with my husband, and he took it and ran with it. “You’re getting guitar lessons for your birthday,” he said. “And a guitar.”

It took me a week to be happy about this. I wanted to take improv classes.

I should back up ... Before I even thought about being a writer, I was a musician. Piano lessons morphed into violin lessons, then voice lessons got added on. I played in symphony orchestra, chamber orchestra, honor orchestra; I sang in choir, and sometimes I got solos. In college I continued playing and singing, and ended up being The-Girl-In-The-Band on violin. Then it all ended when I chose cigarettes over voice lessons, and the violin broke, needing big money fix.

That was 18 years ago, and I haven't picked up an instrument in the interim. But I have never stopped wanting to learn guitar. So I went to my first lesson super excited, and now practice 3-5 times a day, and 4 weeks later, I can’t play a single song recognizably, but I’m having a lot of fun.

This might be hard to hear, but when you begin anything new, you suck at it. And with an instrument, it’s an audible suck. There’s no room for delusions of grandeur about how awesome you are and how those editors or art critics or other drivers are wrong, the sound of the instrument tells you exactly how bad you are, and the only remedy for making that go away is persistence, practicing every day, passion, learning, and a lot of patience.

I should back up (again) ... Two years ago I started writing original fiction with no formal education. Sure, I’ve since read loads of books on how to write books and short stories, and I’ve read loads of books and short stories, period. I’ve been to workshops on writing stories, and panel discussions on how to structure a novel. But like every new, self-taught writer, I thought there was an I WIN button attached to this job.

News Flash: There isn’t.

The thing is about writing is that it takes a lot of courage and bravado to throw yourself at the mercy of editors. I’ve run into writers without a thick skin who scurry away from the job after their first rejection, and then I’ve run into writers with the same punk rock attitude I have after their first few rejections, who're kind of like, “Yeah? Yeah?! You don’t know who you’re messing with, buddy!”

(Spoiler alert: They are messing with nobody)

Guitar has a very objective way of saying how much you suck. Finger placed wrong? The entire chord sounds bad. Distracted for 1 second? Well there you go picking all the wrong strings again. Practice yesterday was awesome? Let’s make you sound like wet farts today. The lack of kindness with which an instrument treats newcomers has me looking at writing more holistically. Maybe being taken down a few hundred pegs in the past four weeks has humbled me, because writing, like learning an instrument, takes persistence, practicing every day, passion, learning, and a lot of patience.

Playing guitar not only helps with the process of writing - play/write every day to master the craft. It also helps with the really hard part — learning patience. Learning the patience to let a story grow into its own so that it’s finished, completely finished, before I send it off to any magazines. Learning the patience to sit back and let places look at my stuff without sending me nuclear after 40 days. And the last bit of patience? Waiting for recognition. There’s a 99.9% chance I won’t get any notoriety doing this, and I am 99.9% okay with that.

I've talked a lot about my novel. My novel, this. I'm writing a novel. Blah blah blah book. Looking back at the evolution of how I've talked about writing my novel over the past year and a half is an evolution in itself. Oh what little I knew, and how I stomped into that battle woefully unprepared, like a soldier in her underwear.

After hearing the feedback from my first readers, I am taking on the Herculean task of rewriting all 440 pages. When I re-read the 2nd Draft over with their comments in mind, it was with a certain glee that I slashed big black X's through scenes with my ballpoint pen. And I grinned like a Morticia Addams every time I read dialog from a character who didn't make it to the 3rd Draft. My readers' feedback was immeasurably helpful, and that read-through I did was like the gleeful tearing apart of Cinderella's dress.

But then came the work.

Oh sure, it's really easy to say how I'm going to rewrite every single page. And I needed to, the writing quality needed to be consistent from Page 1 to The End. So did the narrative voice. And there needed to be some other major changes, which I've mentioned before. So yeah, it's really easy to tell everyone how I'm doing this, and see how impressed they look. And then, as a bonus, tell me how impressed they are, just to back up the "You've got to be fucking crazy" look on their face.

But it's a lot harder to think it. Especially when I sit down at my computer, open up my word processor, and look at that blinking cursor. The scene's already written! I can see those thousands of words counted out right there in front of me, neatly separated by spaces and punctuation marks. It gets even worse when it's a brand new scene and I look at my outline which goes something like:

BLAH BLAH BLAH WRITE SOMETHING ABOUT THE VILLAIN'S EVIL PLAN THROUGH EXPOSITION AND DIALOG TO KEEP THE READER IN THE LOOP. REMEMBER VONNEGUT. NO JAMES BOND VILLAIN MONOLOGUING. DON'T MAKE IT SUCK.

Yeah, real helpful, Jordan. You're an Ace.

But the thing is, I am doingit. When I sit down and stare at that blinking cursor and all the chapters and scenes I have yet to do, I take a deep breath and just go. I read the Before Scene and then rewrite it. All while the comments of my first readers sit on my shoulders, crowded together, chanting their advice over and over to the sounds of Faith & The Muse.

And every time I think, "No. I can't do this," I take one of the scenes I've rewritten, spot edited, and is in that 3rd Draft Bag, and compare it to what it was. And you know what, the 3rd Draft is better. Not by a little bit, but by a lotta bit. The writing quality is improved, the dialog is snappier, the characters more realized, and it's finally going where I want the story to go. The characters and subplots that got the axe deserved it. The ones that stepped in to replace them are better, more believable, and evoke an emotional response.

And I can say this because I am really thinking critically about my work and am not biased. (Lie)

I don't think of rewriting as a daily slog of having to rehash over 100,000 words. I think of it as Progress. I think of it as being closer to realizing my greatest dream my way, not anyone else's way. All with the help of really great friends who read some terribly written stuff who really nailed it with their commentary.

When this book gets sent off to Agents, I want it to wow me. I want to read it over that last time before I start the Query process and think, "I wrote that? Yeah! I wrote that!" Which I know I can do, that's happened before. I am sure that's every writer's goal, but that goal takes a crapton of work, a lot of help, and a really good attitude from you, the writer.

No matter how this novel gets published and read by other people, I want to know I didn't cut corners, that I put in 100% every single time I could, and that I never gave up. I never thought it was too hard, that I couldn't do it, that it was impossible. Those words didn't cross my mind when I was a DJ with high ratings, when I was a social worker with great outcomes, or when I stood at my desk and wrote that first sentence. Even if it did get the axe.

Because in the end, with any career I've had, with anything I've ever done, the only person I have to answer to at the end of the day is me. Every night I ask myself, "Did I do what I could today?" And I've always been proud to answer, "Yes."